1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to distributing load of the color matching processing between an image processor and a printer.
2) Description of the Related Art
A recorded original image is read by a color scanner to obtain image data, an image is output by a color printer based on the image data, to obtain an image similar to the original image in view of color as much as possible, or an image obtained by printing based on the image data obtained by the color scanner, and the image similar to the original image in view of color as much as possible are output by the color printer. In performing such color matching for matching the color of the two images, for example, a profile defining the correspondence between data representing each halftone dot % of CMYK and the color output based on the color data is used, and the image data is converted by using the profile, to thereby obtain an image expressed in a desired color.
As this type of color matching technique, for example, Patent Document 1 (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-328391) discloses an “image processor system” in which choices whether the color conversion processing is to be carried out at high speed, or at high accuracy is displayed on a monitor, and when color conversion at high accuracy is selected by a user, quadrangular pyramid interpolation is selected as an interpolation operation used together for the LUT (Look Up Table) in the color conversion processing, and when color conversion processing at high speed is selected by the user, cubic interpolation is selected to thereby perform color conversion processing.
Patent Document 2 (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-050087) discloses an “image processor” in which input data depending on a color space of an input device is converted to color space data that does not depend on a device based on the observation condition on the input side by a conversion LUT, the data is converted to data in a human color perception color space by a normal transformer and color space-compressed, the color space-compressed data is converted to color space data that does not depend on a device based on the observation condition on an output side by an inverse transformer, and the data is converted to output data in a color space depending on an output device by the conversion LUT.
However, in the conventional art, since the color matching processing is performed either on a personal computer (printer driver) side or on a printer, when large data such as image data is subjected to color matching, color matching depends on the processing capability of the personal computer or the printer. Therefore, there is a problem in that if color matching is performed by a device having low processing capability, long processing time is required.